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It's official—after a bruising election campaign and historic voter turnout, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has secured a second term. Iran's Interior Ministry pronounced Ahmadinejad the winner with a landslide 63 percent of the vote, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader and the country's real authority, congratulated the president on his epic victory.

However, the notion that nearly two-thirds of Iranians want another four years of Ahmadinejad strains any credulity. By nearly every measure, his presidency has been disastrous for most Iranians.

Whether Ahmadinejad actually won at the ballot box remains an open question, to say the very least. Polls and anecdotal evidence pointed to a late surge by former prime minister...